I think we could unpack the issues a little further.
For one thing, as mobile organisms necessitating a sequential process of perception, which we are constantly sorting and judging, in order to navigate, then as members of a narrative based culture, from shairing stories and information, we naturally think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration. "What a clock measures," in Einstein's famous quote.
The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this present state, as the events coalesce and dissolve, future to past.
There can be no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
As an effect of activity, time is similar to temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't refer to them as dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, not the sequence of perception.
So energy, as process, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Think in terms of a wave; The energy is what drives it, while the forms expressed, the fluctuations and undulations, rise and fall, as the energy passes through.
Consider as well that consciousness goes past to future, while the perceptions, thoughts and emotions come and go, future to past.
Which suggests consciousness exists as a form of energy. While it might seem, when considered, as an neutral awareness, consider the mind at night, when you need to go to sleep, as the schedule dictates, but the mind, the consciousness, keeps running through the catalog of issues it is concerned about.
Consider as well that we have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous systems sorts through the forms being manifested. Then it might seem the brain is only referee to this flame of awareness, not necessarily its source.
The problem of our thought process is that it is sequential, while nature is causal. Today doesn't cause tomorrow, rather the sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights.
Yet our mind is these flashes of perception, like still frames making up a movie, as we absorb the information necessary to move through our environment, not necessarily understand it.
We move in a direction and tell stories to explain things, so we thing it is this linear process, with some goal or objective, but the reality is this kaleidoscopic here and now.
The simple fact we are aware and desire, not necessarily what we might be aware of and desiring.
The anarchy of desire versus the tyranny of judgement. The heart and the head.
Even galaxies are energy radiating toward infinity, while form coalesces toward equilibrium.
